Interview : Kate Hudson

Kate Hudson could be excused for looking a tad tired, having spent the night before our interview at Puff Diddy’s post-MTV Movie Awards party. “But I didn’t stay too long as I’m not a big party person anymore and never really was,” explains Hudson in a Beverly Hills hotel room where she is busy promoting her latest film, Alex and Emma. Though she DID manage to meet one Michael Jackson. “That was definitely interesting to say the least,” Hudson says smilingly. “You don’t know how to respond to…it,” she adds with heightened laughter. “He looked better than I was expecting; I thought it might be a little shocking, but I wasn’t that shocked.”

Nothing, it seems, fazes Kate Hudson. All smiles and good humoured, despite her late night, the beautiful blonde actress gets to play an assortment of characters in Rob Reiner’s oddball romantic comedy Alex and Emma. She plays an outspoken stenographer helping novelist-in-debt Luke Wilson complete his period novel in 30 days, whilst also finding her way in Wilson’s fictional world. The actress said it wasn’t difficult getting into the role of a secretary. “I actually used to work as a receptionist in my mother’s company. She figured ‘Why not have one of my kids be the receptionist, instead of paying one’, Like a true Jewish mother. So I had a little bit of knowledge about secretarial services.” She was clearly attracted to Alex and Emma for no other reason than the opportunity to work with the legendary Rob Reiner. “Spinal Tap is one of my favourite movies. I have always been a big Rob Reiner fan in general, I’d go out and see all his movies, so just the opportunity to work with him was a dream come true.” Out of the myriad of characters she gets to play in the film, it is German maid Elsa that remains “the one that I think I loved! I mean beyond loved, because I want to do a spin off Elsa movie as she was so crazy. The second I was in my Elsa costume I would just start talking about her.”

It may seem that Hudson, 24, has the market share of romantic comedies these days. Perhaps it is because in her own life, she has found true love and happiness with her musician husband Chris Robinson. Since Alex and Emma is a film that thematically explores art and reality, one wonders whether Hudson’s relationship with her husband would make a good movie. “Yeah, it would make a really great movie because of the way we met and what we’ve done; there are a lot of characters and interesting stories. In the beginning we were so volatile. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall of our own relationship, ’cause we were just so in love and passionate, then we would just hate each other, throw stuff around and then we would travel to Paris for a week.” The volatility and hostility in Kate’s relationship with Chris, eventually calmed down, but it wasn’t easy. “I think just after you spend more time together, then you also start spending some time apart. I also think Chris realized that when he broke two chairs in the house which cost him a couple of grand, he probably went, ‘I am not gonna throw anything anymore.’ “In the time that I’ve been interviewing Hudson, one doesn’t associate the sweet-natured actress with volatility, but the actress admits to having a dark side, “especially if something that somebody does in my life pisses me off. I don’t have a bad temper, but I am definitely vocal. I am not somebody that lets things blow over. I immediately want to talk about the problems that exist and then if they are not talked about I make them talk about it and then they go crazy,” she says, laughingly.

Hudson and her husband arte now enjoying marital domesticity, trying to be as far removed from their public personas as possible. Rather than party and rage on a Saturday night, the couple would rather play board games. “We have game nights, which is fun as all of our friends really love to play games.”

Meanwhile, her mother is keen for her daughter to do the decent thing: Bear her some grandchildren. While Goldie says she is not pushing, Hudson doesn’t entirely see it that way. “She is a Jewish mother, after all,” she says laughingly. But she isn’t saying how long her mother will have to wait. “I kind of look at it like, if it happens, it happens, but as of now there are no definitive plans. But I do want my kids early enough to really experience my parents young, because I want my parents to be able to see my kids graduate from high school.” The way her mother never seems to age, she will have time to attend all of Kate’s graduations. “She is gonna be like 120 and I am gonna be like ‘When are you gonna DIE? When are you gonna get out of my LIFE?’ She is gonna live forever. Actually every psychic she has ever been to has said she is gonna live a long life.” Long enough to see Kate and Chris raise many a child, the actress happily concedes. “My husband wants a lot and we’ll see once the first one happens. I have thought about adopting, too. I want to experience all that stuff and I definitely want more than two kids.”

Not to mention a film career which keeps on thriving. The busy actress will be back on the hustings in July promoting Le Divorce, co-starring Australia’s Naomi Watts, but her summer plans will mainly entail going on the road with Chris. “He’s going back on the road and we’re gonna do a bunch of other stuff. I think it’s gonna be a pretty active summer.”